While we wait for politics to crank up other matters are more interesting.
On politics, Essential Report has the LNP lead narrowing to 51-49, while Roy Morgan also has a narrowing but by 1.5 points to 56-44. They can’t both be right, but they can certainly both be wrong! Continue reading Poll stuff
Terry Sweetman in the Courier Mail has raised a real question about the objectivity of Commissioner Dyson Heydon’s report on trade unions.
Sweetman says the misconduct identified by Heydon stems from just six of the 132 unions in Australia (Heydon’s figures). Continue reading The tip of an iceberg, or a broadbrush smear?
Ian MaAuley hopes “we will make progress to becoming a real “developed” country, and not just a third world country temporarily enjoying a first world living standard.”
Well, we’ve run out of luck, and make that third rate people. Continue reading The year that was – 2015
While we are all at the beach and otherwise distracted, Malcolm Turnbull has been doing some house cleaning.
Liberal MP Mal Brough will stand aside, pending a police investigation of the Peter Slipper matter, while Jamie Briggs has tendered his resignation as Minister for Cities and the Built Environment following a late-night incident involving a female public servant in a Hong Kong bar during an official overseas visit last month. Continue reading Taking out the garbage
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a commander of Ottoman forces at the Dardenelles during the first world war and later the founder of modern Turkey, has been quoted far and wide as saying in 1934:
There are no contemporary references to the speech. Continue reading Saturday salon 12/12
Labor’s charge is twofold. One is that Mal Brough misled parliament, the other that Turnbull showed poor judgement in putting him in charge of integrity within the parliament as Special Minister of State, that he is unsuitable and should go. Continue reading Saturday salon 5/12
Every three months or so JWS Research does a True Issues survey. Voters are presented with a list of 11 issues, asked to rate them in order of importance, and then rate the government’s performance on each. In every case the government’s performance has been marked down since Tony Abbott was replaced, according to the AFR. Continue reading Voters rate Turnbull government performance below Abbott’s
Continue reading Ciggies at $40 a pack and Shorten’s Labor tanks in QLD
I’d like to establish a separate post on Karen Armstrong’s ideas, which entered the discussion here on the earlier thread and point towards the important issue of the secular state.
I want to make it clear that I’ve been defending the book Fields of Blood as an impressive piece of scholarship. I’m not saying Armstrong is right. Continue reading Karen Armstrong, ‘the myth of religious violence’ and the secular state
No place is safe. You can be hit anywhere where people gather. This seemed to be the message of the six co-ordinated attacks in Paris on a sports stadium, a concert hall, three restaurants and a shopping centre. As the Paris metro ground to a stop, as air and sea ports were closed, as the streets emptied, as France closed its borders, and as the army fanned out onto the streets of Paris the terrorists’ strikes seemed to be successful. Continue reading Paris attacks
Forty years ago on 11 November 1975 John Kerr, the Governor-General, dismissed an elected government with a majority in the House of Representatives. In doing so he he collaborated with judges, senior members of the opposition in parliament and the media. Contact with the Palace was early and extensive.
New information shows that the plot was wider and deeper than previously thought. Continue reading Whitlam dismissal: the plot broadens and deepens
Continue reading A Carbon Tax May be Smarter than Increasing the GST
